narrator: on this episode of "earth focus"...los angeles is known for its urban sprawl and traffic-clogged system of eeways rather than its diverse array of living species. in america is actually a biodiverse hotspot--one of ust a few in the entire world. within the confines of this concretjungle, species are adapting and, in some cases, even thriving. welcome to the los angeles urban wild.

woman: southern california is one of many hotspot areas around the globe which are areas of extraordinary biological diversity. man: if we just think about l.a. county, you're going from sea level to 10,064 feet when you get up to mt. san antonio. when you thinkal about that elevatiange, which is the greatest elevational range of any county in the unitestates, there's a diverse suite of habitats in there, and that includes habitat that might be right

along the busiest freeway in the country...but it also includes places where mountain lions live. i mean, it's just this place of rsabsolutely incredible diy when it comes to thinking about types of habitat and types of species that are thriving here. man: hey, i thought i told you guys to get out here. now, go. co male reporter: and her kids all going for a nice, refing swim all at the exact saime.

woman: there is a hidden jungle in cities like los angeles, and a hidden savannah and hidden wetlands, and other kinds of ecosystems. pauly: there's no magic line where nature stops and city begins. an's all a giant matrix. and in the most ued parts of los angeles, you can still find literally thousands of species of plants and anims. heise: the conventional sdom used to be that cities are biodiversity wastelands, and we're now beginning to rethink that in two major ways. one is that actually, there's a lot of biodiversity in cities, much more so than we had originally known. the her challenge is to think about how we might make this environment that was built by us in terms of buildings, in terms of the parks that we've planted, in terms of the gardens that some of us take care of on a daily basis.

hot could we make this habi more hospitable to non-human species? [coyote barks] [barks] pauly: understanding how species are adaptg to urban areas is an area of research that people are really just starting to get serious about studying. things like coyotes and mountain lions and bobcats, species that we may not always think about as being cityfa dwellers but, i, with a little bit of research, you realize are actually part of the story of a big city like los angeles. heise: the reason that they r ow inhabit what we consi be our spaces is that the city has expanded out into their habitat. but coyotes are also one of those species that do make use of human settlements in often quite ingenious ways in they obviously have learned when to cross streets and whenss

not to chem. it turns out that coyotes are ve smart about actually observing the change of traffic lights. so manthis is the backside of the park here. there are almost no limits to coyotes' ability to adapt to the urban environment... because south central l.a. is probanonymous with the most inner-city neighborhoods in the world. finding coyotes here is just-- just amazg to me and exciting every time i'm able to collect some more sca

here in south l.a. wetlands, there's proof that coyotes use thisrea because i'm finding coyote scat inside these fences. coyoteare species that most people know live in the l.a. arhe, but people think that live in the mountains-- mountainous areas or griffith park, where there's more open t space, but really don'ink of them as animals able to adapt to this type of landscape. [car alarm back to the ranger station. yeah, so, we're in griffith park, and here is one right here.

this park is surrounded b freeway, by urbanization, by some major ers for wildlife. so, we just saw two, maybe 3 coyotes within this picnic area. so, they know that this resrce is here on a regular basis.g coyotes are doetty well in this urban landscape thanks to their adaptability,ut the mountain lions are another story. th i really need some he they're going to have a population for multiple generations to come.

motion-activated cameras that have a sensor in front that's ered by motion or heat that allows me to documentng wildlife that is u particular area. and each photo or each image is time- and date-stamped to tell me activity levels of certain species. oh, there he is. walking right past on the same trail. yeah, he's looking healthy. he's walking really well, which is great to see. p-22 kind of adapted to griffith park, and when i say "kind of adapted," i mean that he has retained the samehi behavior orural counterparts in patagonia and in the western santa monicas. but at its co, his story is about survival. and a lot of people can rate to a story where it's about an individual

asically facing some very, seemingly insurmountable odds and defeating them. it his abilto get into this park, cross through freews that have killed multiple mountain lions before... pa and live in a that is an unprecedented amount of space for a mountain lion to survive in. usually, a male mountain lion needs 200 square miles of space to itself and griffith park only offers 9 square miles. pauly: we know that the level of urbanization that we are bringing to this landscape is causing immense fragmentation. what are the impacts of freeways like the 405 and the 101 and the 5 going to do in terms of allowing these populations to continue to have gene flows so that we're not facing massive issues of inbreeding? ordeñana: i'm sure there's a

lot of times where hs a lot closer than we think. but he's dog what pumas do best, which is avoiding people at all costs. and that's why they've been around l.a. for so long. that's why they've been able to survive in this area surrounded by people. he's not now, because he lives in griffithark, going after people's chihuahuas and pet cats or kind of tten used to outdoor lighting. he's retaining gs behavior as far as eat deer, but he's somehow, and we don't know hows doing this, he's finding enough prey and he's able to avoile even though there's so much more activity in his habitat than other mountain lion habitat. p-22 has gone through a lot of misadventures. use he's a celebrity, he's been able to kind of survive a lot of these ciumstances.

one of those incidences was him getting stuck under a hou and wildlife officers shooting him with beanbag rounds and tennis ball guns. he kept his cool to the point where he waited for those people to tire themselves out before he left, and he left witht anybody seeing him. and that's him being able to kind of use those natural skills of being elusive to keep his distance and stay safe. even the most adaptable species out here, arguably the coyote or the raccoon, he trouble in this landscape because of roads and of a lot of other urban dangers. ul and the reality is the decisions that we make today are going to be all the difference to whether those mountain lions are in the l.a. area 100 years from now. heise: we have been overall, over the last 150 years, been very successful at displacing especially a lot of the animals out of the city d that were to soree harmful to human health and

well-being. but we're w also realizing that in some sense we have overdone that. a: i believe it's ou responsibility to facilitate their coexistence ws. and for mountain lions and wide-ranging species that ao include deer, we need to allow for safe passage across these very formidable barriers that we've created. alat's being proposeg the 101 freeway in agoura hills is to build a cro, a wildlife crossing. this is not a new concept. a lot of other countries have already built these wildlife crssings. what these are are not just bridges, but they're bridges that are vegetated, that have nice restoration that's done leading up to theseing points and fencing that funnel these animals. heise: the cost is comve. so, it's $50 milon that we will invest in mountain lion habitat that we won't investn

something else. so, i think there needs to be m democratic decisiing and extensive consultation about whether we want to do this and who will raise the money for this, who will pay for this. what do we owe mountain lions, what do we owe to other species of plants imals? pauly: man-made structures act as barriers for lots ofpecies in urban areas. but some aspects of ourua infrastructure ay allow non-native species to thrive. the big moment for thinking about water in los angeles is 1913. once you have permanentater

on the landscape, lots of non-native species, if they get introduced, can nowit. so, what's happened is that non-native species that gett duced to southern california, that are maybe from a more tropical place, now can make it here because there's much more water. and one of the ways that a lot of these species are coming in is actually via the nursery plant trade. [animals calling] things like brown anoles and green anoles and various species of geckos and now a thing called the coqui frog. "coqui, coqui, coqui," and it might do this all night long. so, if you live in a neighborhood wh a coqui frog, you might find it incrediblyat aggraving. so, the coqui frog was introduced to hawaii in the 1980s. oncehey get established in hawaii, they start coming into california on

nursery plants. and so, now we have them establied at two nurseries here in southern california. we currently have 15 people out helping us search for these coqui frogs, and that includes biologist with the california department of fish and wildlife as well ast biologisth the natural history museum. but there's these real implications of theso coqui frogsng up and having these impacts and it's just all because they're doing what a lot of other species are doing, which is ride into the nursery plant trade. as a biologist, my interest is understanding how species are dealing with urbanization, whether those are native species that are trying to adapt to these urban settings, or whether these are t non-native specit have been introduced as a result of human activity and are alsog try find a way to make it here in the los angeles area.

we were here specifically to look for slender salamanders. gime a hand grabbing these. and we were able to find 7 slender salamanders, and on top of that we found two other native species--a western fence lizard and a southern alligator lizard. you got a brahminy blind snake? no way! they're super squirmy. woman: yeah, so, we've got a brahminy blind snake here. pauly: yeah, we don't ave any-- i don't have any reports of brahminy blind snakes ght around here. with those slender salamanders, we were able to use some swabs to swab their skin, and those swabs will then be--the dna inbs those sill be sequenced. in addition to that, we were able to take some measurements, some length meas some weight measurements. woman: go. yeah. .5 grams. pauly: i ctainly was hopeful that we would get one species today. i never imagined that we would get 4 species.

in urban places, you have these properties, just a giant jigsaw puzzle of private propertyand so, as a biologist, every 1 steps, i'm on a new piece of private property. what we found is that the be way to do biodiversity research in urban areas is to enlist the help of literally thousands of peple. greg and emily han and other communitntists that have participated in our programs are what allow us to do urban biodiversity research. greg han: i was just, i don't distance while scrubbing dishes and i w this little bit of bright blue that did not look like anything you would see in your backyard. emily han: our claim to fame is we discovered a population of previously undiscovered snls in los angeles. so, we immediately started looking for more snails and found a bunch of other really tiny, little snails. he put a picture of th snails on instagram, and once he did that, we got a

tification that scientists and other snail enthusiasts ery excited about this snail find. woman: it looks great back here, emily. emily han: thanks. woman: and i contacted gregory to say, can i come out and get it because we don't have any of those specime in the collection. yep, that's xerotricha there. and who's ittle guy? emily han: is that a cochlicella barbara? y teeny, tiny one? juvenile. so, in february 1 of 2016, i came out here, the hans invited me, and we just did a little exploration of their backyard anected xerotricha conspurcata, so, the species we're talking about, but then also this other species called cochlicella barbara, which also is a first record f los angeles county. and then now, almost two years later, i'm bac assessing are thecies still here. and they are. we literally are collaborators. like, we have papers together with all of our names on it.th so, those args that-- that collaboration makes this specimen and citizen science and standing in this bacard

a really meaningful thing. pauly: this one' s gonna go right there. we have the specimens that you see behind me, and other specimens all throughout this institution. 35 million specimens and historical collection objects. those can basically be a time machine so that we can understand where species were when we think about the greatest threats to biodiversity that our planet is currentlng, we think about things like climate change, and the reality is thatf onehe biggest threats is actually urbanization. so, we now know that as of 2009, 50% of the human population is now living in urban ar and so, suddenly, it becomes a huge imperative on people understand how we can make urban eas more welcoming to native and desired species. and what better place to do that than los anges?

[bell rings] man:speranza is located in one of the highest-density neighborhoods of downtown los angeles. [kids speaking indistinctly] i'm the principal of esperanza elementar school, just east of the skyscrapers of downtown in the westlake neighborhood, downtown los angeles. woman: can you write the name and post it under the correct bird? kids: house finch, mourning dove, european starling, brewer's blackbird, red-tailed hawk, american crow. boy: hooded oriole, gray egret, great blue heron, and a mockingbird. rumble: the students love this. they love charging in here and really getting to know at a ry deep, profound level what's showing up in our habitat. we observe, we record, we

analyze, we share. all of these are important skills for our students. so, at the very bottom, do you see the live spider in there? kids: yeah. rumble: i'm surrounded by deerweed, native sages, encilia, but if you go back to 2014, i would have been standing on asphalt. peel back that asphalt, allow the dirt to be there, to plant native plants and create a living laboratory for students to really explore. girl: my name is ramona ramino. i like the garden because we come here and explore nature in the garden. what i see the garden is hummingbirds, mockingbirds, and flowers. second girl: my name is jimena lopez. we're trying to illustrate poppies and deer grass. boy: the california poppy is a flower native to california.

rumble: it wasa beautiful ing to have a burrowing owl be discovered by a fourth-grade student two wters ago. and even more incredible was that this little owl stayed with us, and so, i sometimes think of this as aoo without cages. i think of my students who live in those buildings right across the street. they wake up in a concrete building. they go down concrete stairs. there's a little patch of concrete maybe to bounce a ball. they walk across a concrete sidewalk, an asphalt street, another concrete sidewalk, and thecome onto a campus which is largely asphalt. then they go home and they do it again. they need this connection to nature like every human being. now they have access to nature right here on their campus.

hee: i like to call it multispecies justice, so, it's thinking about what is it right to do by people. how do we make this a more just, a more fair space for the different groups of people who inhabit the city, but how do we also makehabitable place for the non-human species that are already pauly: there has been this generaidea out there that if you want to see nature, you need to gto yellowstone or yosemite, and the reality is that that's not true. and everybody should know that that's not true because they just have to start looking around and ty can see the incredible diversity of species that are around them at all times. you don't need to travel anywhere to see nature. you just need to start observing

announcer: "earth focus" is made possible in part by the orange county community foundation and the farvue foundation.

it is estimated there will be two billion more people on the planet by mid-century.ow gring enough food for this booming world population without serious environmental impacts is one of the greatest challenges to face humanity. e same way that we have been through the green revolution, with aquaculture right now we're going through the blue revolution. consumer demand for seafood is on the rise, as doctors tout its health benefits and developing nations can afford more costly sources of protein. by the year 2030, we're going to have to produce an additional 30 million metric tons of seafood to feed the human population. at the same time, wild fish stocks are either depleted, overfished, or stagnant at best. if we're going to actually protect our oceans,